What Was The Back To The Future Secret Cinema?

Announced for July 24th running through till August 10th, the Secret Cinema showing of Back To The Future drew much media attention from the moment it was announced, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

For people unfamiliar with the event, the first shock was the price of the tickets, a whopping £53 ($83). Also visitors were advised to come in fancy dress that was related to the showing of the film, primarily 1950’s style clothing.

The moment the website for tickets went on sale the system crashed and Secret Cinema issued an apology and informed everyone that they were changing to another ticket purchasing system and would open again the next day.

But the worst was still to come. A couple of days before the first event, the following picture showed up on twitter.

After the initial surprise of seeing the scale as to what this event was, news started spreading that the event was in no fit shape to open in just under two days and the above picture seemed to prove that point.

Then came the bombshell! Four hours before the opening night came official word that the first four nights of the show were cancelled and it would reopen on July 31st.

Founder Fabien Riggall told the BBC he had been “fighting” to open but had not been able to meet the local authority’s technical requirements.

“We’ve built an ambitious show and we weren’t able to get to the position in which we were able to open with the local authorities happy. Secret Cinema is a very different kind of experience to a normal concert or show, and it has taken longer to demonstrate to [the authorities] so they are happy. I completely and utterly understand how angry and frustrated people must feel. This is the first time in 10 years of doing these shows we’ve not been able to get there.”

Hundreds of Back To The Future fans had travelled from all over the UK and some from even further afield to see this show and they were not happy. Days booked off work, fancy dress hire and hotels bills all for nothing although they were allowed to reschedule their tickets for future showings or recieve a partial refund.

You can read what the fans thought about the situation in this article over at Buzzfeed.

The preview show for the media was also cancelled on July 30th with the public show again cancelled the following day, this time with just one hours notice!

On August 1st, the event finally opened to the public. Your phone was handed in at the entrance and you walked through to a live action recreation of Hill Valley. Nearly eighty actors brought the recreation to life and this followed through to the showing of the film as well.

Actors recreate the film in front of the cinema screen to the delight of the crowd including the use of a replica DeLorean as the iconic time machine.

This was the biggest even Secret Cinema had ever organised and at last it was paying off. The Hollywood Reporter revealed back in September that Secret Cinema are going to recreate this event again in Los Angeles in 2015 for the films thirtieth anniversary.

About the author | John Abbitt

@UKFilmNerd | John loves the movies and he used to write for his own website, The Tydirium Hangar Bay, in the late 1990's. Whilst the web page idea became lost in the passages of time, John's love of film did not. Now he's back, writing for The Unheard Nerd.